PicTricks emerges from beta to let real humans fix your photos

So you have a poorly lit, badly composed photo. Join the club. Despite exponential growth in the quantity of photos shot for social networks, blogs and personal albums, it seems the quality of those pictures has not improved.

PicTricks, an online service that just emerged from an extended beta, gives those who lack that photo fixing sleight-of-hand another choice. You can ditch the do-it-yourself phone and tablet photo editors and sophisticated desktop software in favor of a warm and sensitive human being to entrust with your precious shot.

PicTricks is not an app and it is not a Web photo editor. It is a service that features identifiable photo experts who will treat each shot individually and according to your instructions. PicTricks is about a relationship between you and the person who is going to make your precious shot shine — you can even chat with the person who will be working on your picture. The company employs a crew of retouching experts and graphic designers in the U.S. — the site even introduces them by name — ready to tackle even the worst photo.

The concept of humans fixing your photos online is not new — Swiftly and FotoFix offer similar services. What differentiates PicTricks is that you can communicate directly with the artist and tell them exactly how you want your photo to look.

Typical improvements include fixing hair and skin, hair color, body contouring, opening eyes, correcting lighting, restoring old photos, color enhancement, removing extraneous people or objects, editing backgrounds, and even adding people into a photo. The service also works with businesses to improve product shots.

The service accepts most popular formats and is especially partial to JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF and PSD. Once you upload your photo, the finished work is guaranteed in 24 hours. Each image costs $5.